Cinema camera or Video camera?

[Jason Sinclair]

I press f in redcine and i see a cool dynamic range with all color processing off. Is there anyway we can just expose, view and export just to this data the sensor sees? Do we have that choice?

 

[jpp]

Just saw Flight of the Red Balloon (dir: Hou Hsaio-Hsien). Never seen so much clipped and over-exposed 35mm film in my life. I didn't think it was pretty, because now I'm attuned to such things. Nevertheless...

"A work of art on the order of a poem by Yeats or a painting by Rothko." John Anderson, Washington Post

"Hou's latest film feels to me like a masterpiece." Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

"Flight of the Red Balloon succeeds magnificently." Philip Marchand, Globe & Mail

Seriously, never seen so many blown out images ever. Hm...

For at least the first 1/2 hour, I thought the damn thing must have been shot on HDCAM for precisely that reason.... A lot of Hou's 35mm work does show clipping, probably thanks to budgetary limits and his interest in street shooting in broad daylight with small crews.

His DP is among the best working today, but you do really have to wonder what those critics were drinking when they saw this film. The shot of the balloon over Paris is lovely, but that's about 1% of the movie. And "Balloon" is probably Hou's weakest film ever. Down with critics.

 

[Jason Murphy]

OK, just a quick point here.

Blowing out 35mm film IS NOT the same as clipping on a digital sensor. The problem with clipping isn't just that you irrevocably lose information in the highlights, it's also that there is a distinct clip line around the clipped area, and frequently you have some channels clipping before others, leading to certain colors in the clipped area. With film, there's a roll off into the blown out area that makes it much more visually pleasing. Furthermore even on blown out film, there's information in the blown out area that allows you to recover parts of that area. Not so on the digital side.

As an aside, and I know it boils down to a matter of taste, but I think that 'Flight of the Red Balloon' was both lovely visually, and a great film. Didn't at all feel like it was shot on HDCAM, at least to my eye. Mark Li Ping-bin really likes to work with blown out areas at times, though (and not just with Hou; Springtime in a Small Town and Vertical Ray of the Sun both have significant uses of blowout in the image).

(As far as it being a weaker film, I have to disagree as well, but with Hou, I'd also have to go back to 'Daughter of the Nile' to find a film of his that I thought was relatively weak, and even that movie is interesting).

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Even with film, if it's blown, it's blown. Yes, there's a roll-off, but that can also be the same with digital. Under-expose by one stop, and you can insert a curve that rolls over that stop. The more you under-expose, the more smoothly you can roll off.

Graeme

 

[Karl H]

not playing devils advocate here, but has build 16 actually increased dynamic range at all, or are you saying that it just helps us to get the most out of the same DR we already had?

 

[Graeme Nattress]

Take a look at the images Jim posted and tell me what you think...

Graeme

 

[Antoine Fabi]

Even with film, if it's blown, it's blown. Yes, there's a roll-off, but that can also be the same with digital. Under-expose by one stop, and you can insert a curve that rolls over that stop. The more you under-expose, the more smoothly you can roll off.

Graeme

Yoooo! voilà!

...and using the "exposure" control in RedCine to lessen the very high luma values on the histogram works great before you add that nice S curve.

 

[Karl H]

Take a look at the images Jim posted and tell me what you think...

Graeme

Well, it's hard to say because I havent seen how much the noise has improved. If it's marginal in normal daylight conditions then I guess the DR won't have imporoved. But maybe it has in tugsten situations.

I guess you can't alter the point at which the image clips but you can drag more image out of the shadows. So you tell me

 

[Jannard]

not playing devils advocate here, but has build 16 actually increased dynamic range at all, or are you saying that it just helps us to get the most out of the same DR we already had?

DNR is dependent on the noise floor. If the noise is reduced, DNR is increased. How much depends on the circumstances.

Jim

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Take a look at the images Jim posted and tell me what you think...

Graeme

A bit soft :biggrin:


Sorry couldn't help it

 

[Michele Gavazzeni]

Take a look at the images Jim posted and tell me what you think...
Graeme

I think Jim haven't notice while shooting that both John Force's cap and his team assistant where clipping.

when back in Redcine:

1st image the image is processed the same way it was shoot
2nd image he has processed the image at a slightly lower exposure and applied a small curve to pull back the middle tones
Now the white cap is in the more pleasant 233 233 233 area but because it was clipped when shot the cap has no details.

 

[Jörgen Persson]

I think Jim haven't notice while shooting that both John Force's cap and his team assistant where clipping.

when back in Redcine:

1st image the image is processed the same way it was shoot
2nd image he has processed the image at a slightly lower exposure and applied a small curve to pull back the middle tones
Now the white cap is in the more pleasant 233 233 233 area but because it was clipped when shot the cap has no details.

That's not true. The cap has more detail. And the brightest values are in the specular highlights of the assistant's headphones.

See for yourself: Use levels in Photoshop and drag the white point triangle while holding down the "alt" key.

 

[Michele Gavazzeni]

The cap has more detail.

yes you're right but its barely noticeable.

if you open the 1st image in PS you apply a curve and you adjust the white point down a bit, the midtones up and the black point moving it at the right,the difference isn't that much

for sure you'll be affecting also the specular light on the assistant earphone
but that joust because are mapped at the same level in the jpg file.

 

[Daniel Browning]

yes you're right but its barely noticeable.

if you open the 1st image in PS you apply a curve and you adjust the white point down a bit, the midtones up and the black point moving it at the right,the difference isn't that much

If you can't see the difference then your display is not calibrated correctly.

 

[Michele Gavazzeni]

A simple what is what.... joudge only with your eyes.
My monitor is ok maybe my eyes are a bit off.

 

[Jannard]

You can get the blown area to look less white, but you cannot recapture the detail that is lost. If you get it right in grading, you don't have to "try to make it look almost as good". It will never be.

Jim

 

[Brook Willard]

Here's a more extreme example to add to the mix. In this shot, about 75% of the circle you see around the sun was clipped. The first shot is the RAW data as it came across in the metadata. The second shot was graded by a friend of mine who is quite familiar with SCRATCH, but is not familiar enough with RED footage to help him. The file was baked out RAW and recovered as much as possible. The third image was my own personal take on the RAW file with highlight recovery my priority [the shadows are a little darker, but I could've brought those up without changing the highlights... I just didn't notice that they were dark until I made this post].

While the whites in the JPEG file may be clipped [or near clipped], the only points that are actually clipped with my grade are the points that were clipped in camera. The sky may look more "blown out" in the third image, but the transition is natural and smooth as opposed to dramatic and harsh. The shirt may look dangerous, but it hasn't actually clipped. In a proper projection, all shades would be present.

This is another point to keep an eye out for. There are times when you will need to kiss parts of your image goodbye. It's the in-depth knowledge of the way the RAW file will handle light that allows me to expose my images properly. This image isn't a shining example, but the point is this: You learn to translate what you see on the camera's monitor to what you see in post and what your desired grade is. Then expose accordingly.

If you exposed this image and hoped to keep every last pixel of sky blue until the clip point, you will process an ugly image very similar to the 2nd in this series. It's possible - all of the detail is there right up until the clip point - but it's a bad idea. You must expose images with the knowledge and foresight to know what you're going to do with it in post.

If I wanted blue sky up until the point where the sky clips [so I wanted it blue until the hard circle starts, then I wanted it to fade to white in the middle], I would've stopped down a stop or two. That would've made the "clipped" circle much smaller, but it would've allowed me to roll off the highlights in a smaller circle.

This particular mentality only applies to the sky. Every other kind of highlight has its own mentality... speculars, skin, clothing, cars, foliage, whatever. Everything must be interpreted just a little differently on the day. If you learn the way that the RAW file handles light and the way that you will handle the RAW file in post, you can learn to expose the camera in a way that will eventually get you to the result that you have in your head.

 

[Evin Grant]

BTW if you're wondering why the sunny highlight area is so large in those images it's because in Dubai there is often "Dust" as they call it but it's really a mixture of dust and fog that adds a high layer of diffusion to the sun when looking straight up.

 

[Jannard]

Brook... great post.

Jim

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

OK, I hate to be the one that shoots off on a tangent, but... That's a nice fisheye, looks like a 6mm or thereabouts. Is it the Nikon (or Century conversion) or something else? What did you use for a reducer to get the entire FOV on frame?